This morning, I decided to tackle a rather large yardwork job that I’ve been putting off all summer.  We have a section of flower bed that is full of overgrown azalea bushes.  We have tons of azaleas in our yard so I decided these needed to go.  We thought that perhaps we would need to hire someone to dig them out.  But this morning, I thought I’d try my hand with a shovel and see what happened.

[Here’s the roaring part.]

I dug them out!  With my bare hands! (OK fine, with gloves and a shovel. And almost cracked our shovel in the bargain!]

The bushes in the foreground are actually on our driveway; the empty dirt in the background is where they came from.

I must admit, I rather enjoyed the sounds of roots ripping from those despised azaleas, which kept overgrowing my driveway.  ROAR!

And I also enjoyed pulling out a giant root ball and saying, “I dug this out myself!” ROAR!

Then I may or may not have had to go inside , drink  a lot of water, and rest for awhile until I stopped feeling a little dizzy and overheated from all that digging in the very hot humid morning.  But still, ROAR!

I just have a couple big bushes to go, along with a lot more hostas.  Once it’s all cleared out, I’m planning a patch of rhubard for the spot.

Baltimore friends – if you desire azaleas or hostas for your garden, come on over and get some.  The bushes still have fairly intact root balls so I think they would transplant fairly well.   They don’t look that great right now because I chopped them way back in the spring but with a little time and some pruning, I think they could probably be turned into pretty nice bushes again.